A recent news article detailed Facebook and Googles “competing” translation methods. Facebook uses a crowd-sourcing/wiki methodology, which allows armies of rabid fans around the world to translate the essential parts of the Facebook interface into the languages of the world. Google, on the other hand, trusts its core ability to program a reliable, automated software interface to handle all translations (see my earlier post here). These aren’t competing systems so much as completely different environments. Facebook has the problem of enormously expanding popularity. They had to quickly translate the interface widely in order to forestall any international competitors. And, with…
